Chancel Screen Research Articles

L'église paléochrétienne double de Martigny (Valais/Suisse)

In this paper, F. Wible and H.-G. Lehner provide the conclusions of a report on the excavation conducted in the parish church of Martigny, the capital of Valais in Roman times and bishopric from the fourth to sixth century. The parish church lies outside the Roman town o/Forum Claudii Vallensianum. The first likely Christian building included two rooms, each with an eastward-facing exedra, belonging to an unidentified Roman building. In one of them, there was a pool which the authors think was a baptistery, whereas the condition of the other does not allow us to interpret its function. The first clearly double church, in the end of the fourth century, consisted of two rectangular rooms (15,40 x 7,70 north and 15,40 x 6 south) further extended by rectangular apses. The excavation revealed the complex development of the church: the baptistery, first included in the south church, was removed when the apse, which had a passage outside, was built; traces of later installations were also noted: a chancel screen in the north church, a semi-circular wall inside the two apses, a portico or gallery in front of the west side, additional constructions (parekklesion ?); one of which is a long narrow building with an absidal chapel, full of graves. In Carolingian times, the north church was rebuilt but the south church was deserted; later, the plan of the Romanesque church was still a double church with a large nave and only one aisle with an apse. In the seventeenth century, this arrangement completely vanished in a now westwardfacing church.

In Memoriam: Rev. John Stanley Tute, B.A

The Rev. John Stanley Tute, B.A., late vicar of Markington, was born at Wakefield, on the 21st April, 1823, and died at Markington, on the 24th December, 1897. Owing to the early death of his mother, and to the fact that his father (after a second marriage) had gone out to Australia as a schoolmaster, young John Stanley was left to the care of a relative, Miss Stanley, of Leeds, under whose kind, but somewhat austere tutelage, he passed his earlier years. Ultimately he was sent to the Moravian School at Fulneck, and when he left that institution, was persuaded to go into the cloth business. Not having any taste for this occupation, he went up to St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree in 1846, coming out in honours. That same year he married, and was ordained deacon. He was ordained priest at Ripon in the following year, and in 1849 was appointed to the newly-constituted vicarage of Markington. For 48 years he discharged the duties of a parish priest in the same village, and during this long period endeared himself to more than one generation of parishioners. His studies also turned in the direction of poetry and painting, but his special forte was woodcarving, in which he had considerable skill and excellent taste. To his skill the Church at Markington owes its reredos, chancel screen, pulpit, and font cover. He was the author of two devotional works, ”Holy Times and Scenes,” and “Meditations on the …

Henry VII. Price Arthur, and Cardinal Morton, from a group representing the adoration of the three kings on the Chancel screen of plymires church

Henry VII. Price Arthur, and Cardinal Morton, from a group representing the adoration of the three kings on the Chancel screen of plymires church